It’s official. Mozilla can now claim the world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period, after Guinness World Records put the stamp on the figure of 8,002,530 for the Firefox 3 browser.
Of course, as the first to hold that, they haven’t smashed any previous record, but it’s still a great achievement to make the record books. They’ll receive the certificate as proof in London next week.
Mozilla Marketing head Paul Kim told the BBC:
"The notion of going for a world record, as gooky and nutty as it may have sounded, was a really sticky idea. It was an idea that translated really well across national borders and to all different kinds of people around the world."
One flaw in the browser was found on the first day, but Mozilla says a patch is coming to fix it very soon.
Mozilla has predicted that Firefox, currently with 19% of the browser market, will break the 20% barrier sometime this month, behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
